


the milky way lies there

by ag_sasami



Series: WIP Amnesty [6]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Ambiguous Age, Ambiguous Relationships, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Developing Relationship, Dissociation, F/M, First Kiss, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Muslim Character, Native American Character(s), Polyfidelity, Queer Characters, Reconciliation, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romantic Friendship, Sharing a Body, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22886476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ag_sasami/pseuds/ag_sasami
Summary: It takes months to find all their pieces and a lifetime more to figure out how their edges fit.
Relationships: Hiiragi Yuzu & Yuri, Hiiragi Yuzu/Sakaki Yuya, Hiiragi Yuzu/Yugo, Hiiragi Yuzu/Yuto, Kurosaki Shun/Yuto, Sakaki Yuya & Yugo, Sakaki Yuya/Yuri, Sakaki Yuya/Yuto, Yugo & Yuri (Yu-Gi-Oh)
Series: WIP Amnesty [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597828
Kudos: 19





	the milky way lies there

**Author's Note:**

> This story started from some speculative headcanon and an obscene amount of time chasing research rabbits, and became...I’m not even sure what. Somewhat incomplete, at least. After coming back to this after a very long break, I've realized it's never going to be more finished than it is now, even if I think it still needs some work. In the end, I love it too much to let it just gather dust in my drafts. So here it is in all its (more or less complete) glory.

The sea breeze cuts through Yuzu’s hair, whips it across her cheeks, her forehead. It tangles in soft pink knots when she clears it from her face. He remembers this: Ruri’s hair, smooth as it slipped between his fingers when he brushed it back over her shoulders; the way his thumb grazed the soft skin of her neck as he did. At that moment, the unbearable longing that sticks in Yuya’s throat threatens to suffocate him. He turns his gaze to the the low path of the sun over the ocean water, fingers pressed as tight as he can into the cool metal of the railing supporting his weight. He counts his breath ( _one, two, three_ ) out in a heavy sigh. Yuzu’s hums, her smile rueful when Yuya turns his attention back to her.

 _I’ve never seen her smile like that before_ , he notes without any happiness of his own to replace the look with something softer, more Yuzu than the brittle face she’s wearing.

“You weren’t yourself there for a moment.”

He says nothing, tugs the goggles down from his forehead to cover his eyes. Safe now in a recently unnecessary way, Yuya reaches an arm out in front of him, inside himself, extends his hand until the burn of the stretch reaches his splayed fingertips. _Yuto?_ In reply, Yuya hears nothing but the empty space in his consciousness. 

He shakes his head, lets his arm drop at speed into the unforgiving metal of the rail. “It’s only me.” They both turn their gaze to the blinding brilliance of sunset gleaming off the open ocean in the distance.

_Where was I before this?_

It happens in a start, a creeping sensation of fog in the back of his mind before Yuya finds himself in darkness that feels alive and developing into something more fully formed with every heartbeat. Brambles, tangles and savage thorns slithering from the gathering shadows, climbing dark trees thick with moss and peeling bark. The vines trail him, cut between ferocious little plants that slowly devour things in the darkness, leave Yuya feeling stalked and unsettled. Damp air, unnaturally thin and somehow stifling anyway; he catches the smell of motor oil and the sharp metallic smoke of soldered metal stings his nose, and—

He wakes with a gasp, moonlight oozing through the gap between his curtains. Clammy. Tangled in sheets. 

Sitting back on his heels, knees in the low plush of the carpet in Yuzu’s living room, Yuya smells dust and damp fabric. He remembers this: the cold leaden feeling in his gut, and the way the speed of his D-Wheel failed to bring him any peace; how all he could do to feel the least bit in control of himself was pray. Before Yuri took Rin, he lacked any real reason for prayer. Mostly, he bothered to do it at all because Rin reminded him. She kept their time and made sure he remembered. Yuya hears her voice, soft and unusually grave saying, “When we’ve got nothing else, we have each other and we have this.” 

People moved to City from all over the world chasing the Top’s lie. City’s slums teemed with interesting Commons, half incomprehensible and strange to one another, knitted close by their shared exile and oddity. Rin borrowed the words from an old woman in the first neighborhood they called theirs. Blind in her left eye—milky grey and moving as though it still had vision—calm and quiet and devout. Shockingly adept with a switchblade. She said those same words to them in a small corner of their alley where she kept a wilting garden alive by some miracle of will. Under warm hazy light, grass seedheads brushing their cheeks, she taught the pair of them the words to say and how best to be heard by her inscrutable god.

_When we have nothing else, we have this. We have each other and we have this._

Nothing in the Common’s part of City ever stayed clean, and it took no small feat to find some forgotten floor mat and scrub the dirt from between its threads. Still, he dragged it to the highest accessible rooftop: out of sight and right in the blinding brightness of midday. No bells rang in that part of City, but he spread out the bit of rug unconcerned with whether he was within the right hours. Beneath the sun, skin already panic-warm beneath his riding gear, he smoothed the edges of the mat down over the cracks in the roof. 

In the midst of his anger, his devastation, he faced this weakness: that he left a piece of his heart so neglected until there was nothing else; until he needed something bigger than himself to save him. It filled up the spaces between his fear—afraid for Rin, for himself without Rin—with shame too heavy to bear through to the end of noon prayer. Yuya remembers this too: the feel of the rug’s woven fibers against his forehead and nose, its grain beneath his palms; the ache of kneeling on unyielding concrete, frozen in _sujud_ and screaming through helpless tears.

“Yugo?” Yuzu asks, her voice a shade of hesitant curiosity.

“No, just me.” Yuya’s voice sounds empty to him. Yuzu’s furrowed brow and tilted mouth say she hears it precisely the same.

Yuzu sits down beside him on the grass, his mirror: knees held up to her chest in the circle of her arms and feet crossed at the ankles, chin on her knee. Yuya rolls his head to the side to look at her when she asks, “When did you start gardening?” 

“These flowers are boring, aren’t they,” he says rather than actually answering her question. Passively beautiful, dull. 

“I think they’re pretty.”

“They are,” Yuya agrees. With a resigned huff, he turns his face, presses his mouth, his nose into his knee, closes his eyes and laments, “And totally uninspiring.” These cloyingly fragrant flowers—fragile—give way to bruised petals. Their sweetness plundered by insects, uprooted and cut for someone else’s pleasures. He prefers the warm earthy smell of sphagnum and depleted soil and plants than can feed themselves, all sticky petaled with hidden teeth and deceptive sensitivity. “It’s better when they can bite back,” he murmurs into the heavy fabric of his pant leg. He remembers this: the slow drain of color from people’s faces when he approached, and how he drowned a little every time he watched a person’s eyes become dark wells in their terror. 

The hand slipped into his is warm and soft, startling. When he turns to face her, Yuzu’s spine is straight and she leans in toward him, grave-faced. She waits until it becomes clear that Yuya’s attention is turned wholly to her, says, “Yuri, you don’t have to keep fighting.” His eyes sting and the barest feeling tugs at him, long buried under the weight of a body count in cards. Somehow—despite the all darkness that Yuri let swallow him whole—some _thing_ , some fragmented part of him that’s still capable of hurting survived. Heavy with ache. The familiarity of Yuzu’s hand in his intensifies the growing ache. A sweep of his thumb over the soft skin of Yuzu’s fingers, her nails long and painted the barest shade of lilac.

He kept the greenhouse summer-warm and humid enough that his hair would cling to his cheeks in escaped strands. Most of the space gave way to bog plants, pretty things in purples and deep reds and sharp edges to keep his carnivores company—sundews glistening in the light, flytraps with maws tiny and open, pitcher plants drowning errant insects. Knotweed and spider lilies, meadowsweet and burgundy astilbes, and above the water in soils that drained down to his swamp, black barlow and bearded irises. He remembers this: the compulsion to tend to his needy plants and guilt like a knife when they wilted or browned prematurely under his watchful eye; the first and last time he shared anything of himself with someone else; what it felt like to remove his hand from hers and drop her card into the sopping soil beneath his water irises after she scoffed at his care for _such ugly things_. 

_It’s the dangerous ones that are most likely to die if you don’t pay close enough attention to them_.

“I’m not—” His voice comes out in a tight rasp. “It’s me.”

She squeezes his hand in hers gently, and holds on as her mouth turns up in a sad smile, brows falling into a furrow he wants to smooth away with his thumb. “I know, Yuya.” 

The vines trail him, cut between ferocious little plants that slowly devour things in the darkness, leave Yuya feeling stalked and unsettled. Damp air, unnaturally thin and somehow stifling anyway. He catches the smell of motor oil and the sharp metallic smoke of soldered metal stings his nose. Small singing birds are stealing insects off sundews and he keeps catching the swish of tattered fabric in the corner of his vision. Between the branches of distant trees, Yuya tracks an eerie blue glow, some beacon between brambles. When he finally finds Yuto laying in the overgrowth it’s under the watchful eye of his phantoms and the ghost orchids clinging to cypress trees. Cat’s claw and bittersweet nightshade grow over his arms and legs, vines twined between his fingers in whorls and spirals. And Yuya tears at them, certain to his bones that he can’t feel Yuto because he’s asleep beneath the vines— _he’s asleep, he’s just asleep_ —kept comatose under their stranglehold. Mud sticks beneath his nails as he digs into the dirt, cuts the tendrils from his hands, until Yuya’s own hands are bleeding while the vines continue to consume Yuto. 

When Yuya wakes up drenched in cold sweat and heart racing, his hands ache, raw with cuts that aren't there. The vantablack hollows where the phantoms’ eyes should be are burned into him in aftervision flashes of their glowing faces.

On Yuzu’s recommendation he visits Mieru. That he lets her throw herself into him, just sets his hands on her shoulders as she wraps his ribs in her arms like a vice stops her abruptly. “Darling?”

“Yuzu said you might be able to tell me what’s wrong with my soul.”

“Your soul?” She looks up at him, frowning.

“Yeah.” Mieru steps back and nods at him, collects her apple from the table and considers him thoughtfully for long enough that the back of Yuya’s neck itches from the attention. She closes her eyes and sighs deeply. When she looks at him again Yuya doesn’t know how to interpret her expression. “Mieru?”

She reaches up to cup his cheek, on tiptoes, eyes wet when she tells him, “The darkness is gone but your heart's too full. I can’t see anything through all the pain you’re carrying.” 

Few of the remaining Resistance members remembered the rituals. Survival trumped tradition, and the band’s already scant resources left no space for the trappings of ceremony. He remembers this: the warm feeling of Ruri’s palm, her slender fingers slotted tight between his; the low hum of Shun’s voice, discordant against the rest of the melody rising up around them. The rhythmic footfalls of the rest of the Resistance tracing the path of the sun with their steps.

“Peace made us complacent,” he mumbles to no one in particular. 

The elders passed on in the relative quiet of Heartland, leaving behind children without a proper understanding of how to weather a storm. Shun and Ruri remembered though. Their grandparents taught them the way things were done, passed down their stories in the quiet way people share when they lack fear for the future. This dance was a reaction, an old cult practice born of war to drive away invaders. It would have continued on for days, ceaseless, if not for their depleted energy and the second wave of Academia soldiers. He remembers this: The smell of fear heavy in the air; a pulse racing with delight as screams cut through the sound of crumbling buildings. Fear for the small band of dancers steadfast in their determination to see the ceremony to its end; satisfaction at the sheer number of cards they produced in that single burst of purple light, wrapped in the mournful feeling of apology. Newer than the memory and out of sync with the rest. 

It was _so easy_ to give into the darkness. 

It was devastating to watch them all go down.

Yuya’s vision swims and his stomach turns over violently, unable to disentangle the mad joy of the massacre from fresh remorse, from creature fear coursing through his veins. The ground rises up to meet him. Clawing desperately for Yuto again—knowing the fear belongs to him and still failing to reach him—Yuya barely registers the cool grass against his face. Searching, calling for him, shouting into that quiet emptiness in his mind. If Yuto _is_ still there, Yuya cannot hear him. 

“Yuya!” When Yuzu reaches him he’s on his side curled in on himself, palms over his eyes with finger tips digging into his forehead. “What’s wrong?” The grass rustles beside Yuya’s face when Yuzu sits on her shins beside him, her hand a gentle weight against his temple. Yuya presses his forehead against the side of her knee, shuffles to wrap an arm around the outside of her thigh, clenches his fingers into the grass. The softness of its flat wide blades gives way and cuts into his skin when he moves too much against their over-long edges.

“I have their memories, but I’m all that’s left of us.” He takes a slow breath, shaky, shallow. His voice weak and difficult to make out above the rustle of grass in the breeze when he asks, “What am I supposed to do now?” It’s a question that no one answers—no one can, but Yuya wishes someone had an answer anyway.

“Yuya…” 

“I can’t feel Yuto anymore, Yuzu.” _This_ is too much. Saying it aloud snaps the final thread stitching up his composure. Floodgates rent open: tears pooled and spilling hot over the bridge of his nose, left to fall with great hiccuping breaths. Yuzu removes her hand from his temple, covers his eye instead, the one not dropping salt water directly into the grass beneath his jaw. His goggles now made of warm slender fingers. 

She hums consideringly, “Yuto’s still in there, somewhere. I see him in your face sometimes.” Behind the shield of her palm Yuya gives up the fight and lets misery take him; clings tightly to her wrist with his free hand and becomes his ragged mourning in heavy sobs. 

He feels a distinct absence, all distraught and hollow, left behind by having his purpose forcibly removed. He feels unmoored. 

_I just want to be alone again_. It’s the first of them he’s heard since they all took up silent residence in his head.

“Liar,” Yuya says out loud to no one at all. 

He’s tearing at the vines, certain to his bones that he can’t feel Yuto because he’s asleep beneath the vines— _he’s asleep, he’s just asleep_ —kept comatose under their stranglehold. Mud sticks beneath his nails as he digs into the dirt to carve out roots, careful of the cobra lilies and butterwort flowers on instinct; unweaving the tendrils from Yuto’s hands, until his own hands are cut open while the vines continue to consume Yuto. Shaking and bloody and worn so desperately thin from this recurring nightmare and the silence in him, he hazards a guess. _Yuri, help me. Please!_ Face turned up and eyes squeezed shut and he’s not going to cry this time, even as he’s shouting, _I_ need _him, and I don’t want to keep hurting your plants._

‘Have you tried not yanking them out like that?’ It’s Yugo who snaps at him. Abrasive and toeing the sharp edge of hostility. Yuya doesn’t turn to face him, continues sitting back on his heels loose-limbed and exhausted and staring up into the dark nothingness of the dream.

 _No. They’re just so_ —

‘Then stop treating them like an enemy.’ Unexpected, coming from Yugo. Yuya find it surprising when it probably shouldn’t be. Of course Yugo would know the right answer; he’s lived inside Yuri’s head. ‘He needs you to need _him_ too, you know.’ Yugo huffs through his nose. ‘Not that he’d ever say it.’ 

‘Be quiet, Yugo.’ Yuri’s voice startles him into a violent spasm of shock. He speaks in low tones, drawls Yugo’s name out too long with intent to annoy, Yuya assumes. 

‘Not yuu-gou! It’s—’

‘Yes, yes I know. Be quiet anyway,’ he insists. The mud squelches beneath his knees as he joins Yuya, close enough their arms brush past one another when they breathe. Surreal. Yuri slips his fingers beneath a nightshade vine, works his hands methodically up Yuto’s hip until he finds the end of the plant. As he begins to unfurl it, Yuri leaves the vine where it clings to Yuto, just loosening the knots it has wrapped around itself. It’s tiny purple petals are shadows against Yuri’s pale skin. He lets the vine slip from his fingers, works his nail under a barbed cat’s claw next. 

‘The claws are built to crawl and climb to whatever place they’re trying to reach.’ Yuri murmurs. ‘You see, when you tear at them they dig in and hold on to anything they’ve attached themselves to.’

_What should I do?_

‘Mmm. Lift them up, urge them away from where they grew until they let go. Give their vines somewhere new to grow. Otherwise, they’ll keep clinging to things they have no business hanging onto.’ This strange dreamspace, he realizes, is the only time Yuri has been close save for his vague nearness that afternoon with Yuzu in the garden. Yuya looks at him then: takes in the way the phantoms’ light plays shadows across his face; how his hair sweeps back across his jaw as he cocks his head to consider the next segment of vines; the way he looks as tired as Yuya feels. It makes him unaccountably anxious.

Yuto’s hands are mostly entwined by nightshade in coils like springs stretched too far and tangled. Careful of the flowers hanging over his wrist, Yuya unwinds them from around fingers one at a time, runner by runner until Yuto’s hand is exposed and he feels relief like burning in his chest. He sits up from his working hunch, nudges Yuri’s shoulder gently with his own. _Thank you._ Yuri’s eyes widen noticeably as his concentration breaks, before he schools his expression back into a mask of impenetrable calm, hands still gentling the vines from Yuto’s limbs. 

When Yuya pulls himself from the dream Yuri’s hum still echoes in his ears.

After, Yuri vanishes entirely, becomes some absent ghost out of Yuya’s reach. Not so much as an echo of him.

Once he knows the shape of Yugo it takes no effort to seek him out, to follow the vibrant sound rattling around in Yuya’s mind. It takes less effort with Yuzu nearby, when Yugo invades the space that rightfully belongs to Yuto, so close to his consciousness that Yuya feels crowded and flighty.

“No.”

“What?”

“I said _no_ ,’” Yugo insists.

“Why are you so unhelpful?” It’s a whine, embarrassing, but Yuya’s getting desperate.

“Yuri’s gonna do Yuri, and Yuri does things alone. So I’m leaving him alone. If you’re going to bother him, so you can force a smile on him or whatever you’re thinking,” he scoffs. “I’m not going to help. I don’t want to.” 

Yugo shuts down, walls himself off from Yuya for while. So he reaches for Yuri the same way he did Yuto: grasping at empty spaces and yelling into the darkness for him. No change. No Yuri. Just the faint curl of Yuto, sluggish but closer to Yuya’s conscious thoughts now that he’s worked away most of the vines; Yugo’s brilliant shine farther away from his awareness, by design. Behind the three of their minds, a notable void. He tries not to think about why it bothers him so much.

It takes a dreamwalk to find him. An unplanned uncoordinated dream—Yuya lacking any understanding of how or why it works—following weeks of trial and error and error and yet more error. The swamp is gone now. Fairy trees with their peeling bark, living vines, dewdrop carnivores nestled in the moss now all unreachable. Instead he finds Yuri, _finally_ , blank-faced and listless in a greenhouse— _Yuri’s_ greenhouse, he realizes—on a gently curving bench. Its dark wood is sealed smooth and glossy set in wrought iron. With the way it swells up behind his knees, the arc of his spine, Yuya guesses someone built it specifically for Yuri. 

Until he showed Yuya how to dig Yuto out of the undergrowth, he had only known Yuri as an agitator. Looking at him now in his own space disorients Yuya. Discontent, maybe unhappy, but he looks at ease and more stable than Yuya recalls. This is the Yuri that existed beneath the sadistic soldier, the part of him that held onto humanity. That version of him _belongs_ here.

“Is this place real?” Yuya winces at the intrusiveness of his voice, how it tears through the calm silence. 

Yuri makes no motion to acknowledge him other than to reply, “It was once.”

“I mean, is this a dream?” Yuri makes a thoughtful sound, letting several moments pass otherwise in silence.

“Something like that, I suppose. I’m not sure myself.” They fall into an uncomfortable silence, Yuri staring at nothing and Yuya scratching at the nape of his neck, considering his next move. “Why are you here, Yuya?”

“I’ve been trying to find you.”

“I am aware,” he sighs, resigned. “My question stands.”

“You helped me before, and I thought that—” Yuya clears his throat voice sticking in his chest, one part anxious, one part uncertain. He doesn’t have an answer to that question sorted out already, voicing the thoughts as they come to him. “I thought that I should get to know you. As more than someone to be afraid of, I guess. Since you’re, uh, in my head now,” he finishes awkward, thin.

“Awww, how thoughtful,” Yuri coos. Unkind. His tone slips, falls back into his contemplative flatness. “You may as well leave now in that case. There’s nothing more to know.”

“That isn’t true.” Yuri snorts at this, dismissive. It drives Yuya to action, to drop hard onto the bench beside Yuri, to put a hand above his knee and lean in to say emphatically, “I know there’s more to you than violence now that Zarc is gone!” It happens fast, takes Yuya off guard: Yuri twisting away from the weight of Yuya’s palm, hands wrapped around his throat, pushing him back back back until his head makes contact with the sturdy wood beneath them. Knees bent at uncomfortable angles.

“You know nothing!” he growls. Leans in close, breath hot on Yuya’s skin. “What makes you think you’re entitled to more?” The words punctuated with the squeeze of his fingers, his thumbs bracketing either side of Yuya’s windpipe and pressing down firmly. Painful but not lethal. Yet. Debatable even whether Yuri could kill him here, a thought which inserts itself unhelpfully into his racing head. 

“I don’t. I’m not,” Yuya croaks. Fingers tighter, breath hard to find, and it doesn’t feel like a dream: Yuri’s weight, the way he’s braced one knee on the bench between Yuya’s legs, the other rooted firmly on the ground. “I just.” Getting desperate for air, gasping, voice straining and rasped out whisper-soft. “When was the last time anyone was nice to you, Yuri?” 

Yuri startles and the vice of his fingers relaxes against the column of Yuya’s throat. He asks dazedly, “What?” Coughing, wheezing, Yuya’s fingers circle the bones of Yuri’s wrists while he tries to regulate his breathing again. This too startles him and Yuya feels it snap through Yuri’s arms.

“Even if I’m afraid of you. Even if you _want_ me to be, I’m still not letting you disappear.” He runs his thumbs up the inside of Yuri’s wrists, following the veins beneath his skin. Hesitant, intentional. Gentle. “I won’t do that to you.”

“I don’t understand.” Palms clammy, slack but still holding Yuya’s life—his consciousness, his dream maybe—quite literally in his hands.

“Yuto, Yugo, they’re easy,” he croaks, clears his bruised throat in an effort to speak more steadily, “They’re always alive, right there with me. You’re one of us but I can’t ever feel you and I hate it.”

“Selfish,” Yuri hisses. His eyes, unfocused and unseeing, stare vacantly at the movement of his own hands. Tracing the tense muscles of Yuya’s neck, the hollow of his throat. “I…” He doesn’t continue. Shakes his head ever so slightly; stills his fingers and keeps them flush against Yuya’s skin until he can’t anymore. Pushes himself upright and falls back hard on the bench, still facing Yuya where he sits now between his feet. 

As he levers himself upright again as well, Yuya notices how small Yuri looks. Shoulders curved inward and the posture is so tremendously wrong it makes Yuya ache, a physical sensation heavy in his chest. He rubs at his throat, almost certainly purpling in the shape of fingers already. “Yuri.” When he says it, Yuri shakes his head slowly, lips pressed together in a frown. He sits there, still, looking uncomfortably lost for so long that Yuya is helplessly compelled to touch him. Without considering more than desperately wanting to take the expression off of Yuri’s face, he stands up on his knees in the space between Yuri’s legs. Throws his arms around Yuri’s neck. Buries his face into fabric of Yuri’s jacket, its epaulet cold against his cheek. 

“Get off of me.”

“No.”

“No?” Yuri slams the heels of his palms into Yuya’s lower ribs, which does nothing more than pull an uncomfortable grunt from him. “Why are you—”

“Because you're hurting and I don't know how else to help.”

“I don’t _need_ help. Quit trying to fix me.” He struggles against the circle of Yuya’s arms, buries crescents into the meat of his arms hard enough to break skin. 

Yuya only holds on tighter, turns his head, then quietly, “I can’t fix something that isn’t broken,” breathed into the crook of Yuri’s neck. Again, Yuri abruptly drops the fight and stills under Yuya’s embrace. Staggered. They sit there unmoving but for the slow inhale-exhale of their asynchronous breathing. Beneath his arms, Yuya feels the moment the tremors begin in Yuri’s shoulders. He murmurs, “I get it. I’m lost too.”

It breaks Yuya the moment Yuri reluctantly winds his arms up his back, digs fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt, and lets his forehead rest against Yuya’s temple.

“What’s the point anymore.” Yuri’s voice low, unsteady. Defeat in his voice when he says it like a fact rather a question.

“Whatever we want it to be.”

When he wakes—pillow wet beneath his ears—it’s to salt trails down his face and the void that should be Yuri still echoing hollowly in his mind. The ghost of fingertips cling to his spine and he bites down on his tongue to hold back a fresh wave of tears that are mostly his.

The first time Yuya visits Shun he brings Yuto’s duel disc. Yuya didn’t remember this: Shun’s cold fingers wrapped around his palm, the hooded stare that burns straight through to Yuya’s spine. The warm curl of desire in the pit of his stomach and the mess of feelings knotted in his chest don’t belong to him. He swallows thickly, mouth suddenly dry, watches Shun follow the bob of his throat. 

“You can come back again if you feel like it,” Shun mumbles, turning away from Yuya.

“Yeah, I think I will.”

The battle stage is hot in the late afternoon sun, warms Yuya’s skin through the jacket smoothed out beneath him. He pulls down his goggles against the bright light behind his closed eyelids, for all that the effect is minimal. Arms splayed wide, body starfished and basking at You Show School and grasping blindly for Yuto in his head again now that he can feel him. He’s still clawing at emptiness while they relearn how to share a body with each other, how to find that space where they both exist.

Yuto finds his hand, pulls Yuya toward him. “I heard you calling me and I couldn’t reach you.” He speaks slowly, frustration coloring his tone and grief reshaping his face into something Yuya hates. This pain is still raw for both of them, edging toward infected having been avoided for so long to survive the act of getting by alone. “It hurt like,” Yuto pauses, considers a moment, “that feeling you get from losing your breath when you’re trying to swim to the surface.”

“It burns.” Yuya rests his forehead against Yuto’s, the best comfort he can manage in this state.

“Exactly that.”

“Was it a dream? The vines, I mean.”

Yuto lifts his head, hums consideringly, “I don’t know. I think I dream when you do.”

“Maybe there isn’t a difference? It felt real. I mean, I could touch you! And not like this.” He gestures vaguely, acknowledging the insubstantial way they exist in this place. “And every time I woke up my hands hurt from trying to get you untangled.”

“Either way. Thank you for that.” 

Yuya shakes his head, deflects Yuto’s gratitude. “I’m not sure what I would do if I lost you.”

Yuto cups his face, traces Yuya’s eyelashes with his thumb. Murmurs, “Let’s not find out,” against his lips.

They visit Shun again. Now that Yuto is fully present, all the conflicted feelings tangled around and threaded into his heart race to the surface where Yuya can feel them wholly. Yuto tries in vain, briefly, to hold them back, tugs them down to where he’s at below Yuya’s consciousness, relenting when he realizes that he can’t hide. This time Shun is close enough that Yuya can see the thud of his pulse and it’s all he knows. Everything he remembers now is Yuto’s complicated _wanting_. It bubbles up around Yuya and he slips under Yuto’s feelings to the back of his own mind. Turns over control of his body _—their_ body—when Shun scrapes his teeth against the soft skin at the inside of Yuto’s wrist.

Once Yuto reestablishes himself in that space firmly, it makes the process simpler for the other two to accept the tacit permission Yuya has always extended them. Neither Yugo nor Yuri work very hard at making themselves known though, and Yuya retains a sliver of privacy for it. Yuto is considerate and so intimately acquainted with Yuya’s mind that he knows without being asked when his presence is a burden. 

Yugo appears from unceremoniously crowding Yuto out of the forefront. He's cross-legged and holding onto his ankles, grinning in their liminal mental space. 

“I know you've been on a bonding mission and I'd like to save us both the time. Just get me a D-Wheel and let me hang out with Yuzu, and that’s good enough for now.” 

“For now?” Yuya hears the implied lack of interest in being friends.

Yugo shrugs. “Sometimes I feel like hedging my bets.”

“Yeah, right.” Yuya rolls his eyes but nods in acknowledgement. “I’ll see what I can make happen.” 

Yugo harasses Yuya until he relents. Even Yuto can’t keep him under control as he makes his presence known like a voice directly in Yuya’s ear. Pushing. Nagging, “You promised you’d get me a D-Wheel.”

“No, I said I’d see what I could do.” 

“And you haven’t done.”

“Not really, no.” Nothing in Yuya’s tone suggests either apology or remorse. 

“Unbelievable!”

“ _I_ haven’t done anything. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. You’ll have to wait though.”

 _Patience_ : a virtue Yugo lacks.

Yugo sulks. Yugo makes Yuri cranky. Yugo makes Yuto clench his teeth in a way that makes Yuya’s head hurt from the inside out. When Yuya all but reaches his limit, Yuzu swoops in to rescue him, his knight in turbo duel gear. On a breezy afternoon—air comfortably warm and sun shining intermittently from behind clouds—she shows up on her D-Wheel and whisks Yuya away to the You Show School. He calls up Yugo, drags him out of his unnecessarily melodramatic pout, his comment about which leaves Yugo decidedly irked. It lasts a moment. 

It lasts long enough for Yugo to take in the sleek white bike, rims a dull sulfur yellow without the power running them blinding bright. Left dumbstruck, gaping behind Yuya’s consciousness, Yuya laughs at him. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever been quiet, Yugo.”

Yuya stops everything on Fridays when Yuzu texts him a reminder just before noon, learns the right words and how best to speak to a god only part of him believes in.

On Yuzu’s birthday, she drops a helmet in Yuya’s lap and tells him they have places to be. 

When Yuzu parks the bike at the top of a hill overlooking the city, Yuya comments on how terrifying she is as he clambers off the seat after her. 

“If that was enough to scare you, you would have hated riding with Yugo. This bike won’t go half as fast as his D-Wheel.” Yuya snakes his arms back around her waist, hooks his chin over her shoulder, turns his smile into her skin.

“You always pronounce my name right the first time.” 

Yugo teaches Yuzu how to modify her D-Wheel; how to make sense of its programming, tear it down and build it back up from its bolts both steel and digital. On this occasion, she’s crouched next to him down on one knee and resting her arm on the other thigh, leaning her weight in to see the disconnected wire he finally tracked down among the labyrinth of machinery. He glances sideways at her, takes in the concentration written in the intensity of her gaze and the way she’s chewing on the far edge of her lower lip.

 _Self-control_ : another virtue Yugo lacks.

Yuzu reaches out to follow the wire with her fingers, trace it up to where it connects in the tangled steel heart of the bike. Before she can—fingers just outstretched and almost close enough—he slips his hand beneath her bicep and pulls her gently toward him. Feels the sense of slowing time as she turns to look at him, as he rises up to meet her, as he presses his lips against hers. Wide-eyed. Closed-mouth. Yugo pulls back, _just_ enough to see her clearly, just enough to find her free of slack-jawed shock or intent to retreat. 

He does what he does best and stops thinking. ( _Yuya_ doesn’t stop thinking. _Yuya_ is the picture of slack-jawed shock in the back of his own mind.)

This time she closes her eyes. This time she moves to brace her hand on his shoulder. This time they carry on for a bit longer as they figure out a rhythm that works. Yugo catches her lip between his teeth, just once, the same place she’d been absently biting in her focus. He watches her eyelids flutter briefly before he lets her go with a blindingly triumphant smile that’s more teeth than anything else.

Yuya drapes himself over the back of the couch beside Yuzu with an “oof,” knuckles settled against the seat cushion and ribs smashed sharply against the back of it. “Let’s watch something scary.”

“Since when do you do horror movies?”

“I don’t,” he replies and vaults over the couch, creaking the frame and earning a squawk of protest from Yoko. “Yuri does.”

“Oh! Well, I have one I’ve been meaning to watch if you’re sure.” 

Yuya shrugs. “Sure. Let’s do whatever that is.”

Yuzu fiddles with the system, pulls up the movie and looks askance at Yuya one more time. “You sure you’re sure?”

“Yes!” Exasperated. He reaches across her to start the movie himself. Yuzu knows the moment Yuri is the one sitting next to her. Unlike Yuya, who melts into her space—ankles crossed, knees touching, tucking an arm under hers—Yuri sits stiff-spined and uncomfortable at an awkward distance halfway between cushions. She leans over and tugs firmly on his arm.

“Come here,” she demands, pulls him toppling gracelessly over and rearranges them so his head rests in her lap. “Better?”

“Maybe,” he admits, grudgingly. 

“ _Maybe_ nothing,” she retorts, brushes the hair back out of his face with her fingers, tucks it behind his ear for him. With her thumb she turns circles against his temple, idly runs her fingers along his jaw.

Yuzu is the one to kiss Yuri: tilts her head and meets his lips with hers, just briefly enough to register her intent. His immediate response reads clearly: _flight_ , before he breathes out slowly through his nose, consciously relaxes into her touch. Permission given and his sharp edges soften as she cups his cheeks in her hands, kisses him again. Slow. Not a chaste thing, but careful all the same. His hand was already at her waist and Yuri places the other there as well, a perfect mirror. 

_This is enough_ , he thinks, content just to have. Living constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed by simply allowing himself to exist, he doesn’t _want_ more than this from her: Yuzu and her casual affection, consistently within arm's reach without caging him. Always so willing to be a constant physical point of contact, all without so much as asking for something he might not want to give. He pulls her closer, until they’re a borderless impression of purposeful warmth.

Of all his strengths, Yuri is far and away the best of them at manipulating their inner space. It holds form in all the places he’s played architect, sustained even when he isn’t occupying it. As in the dreamspace before, contact feels real, the weight of being touched left warm over skin. 

Yuri slips the jacket off his shoulders, let's it crumple where it lands pooled around his hips. He extends his arm to Yuya who unbuttons the cuff of his shirt—one, two—turns it up into a sharp crease. Yuya: standing between the frame of Yuri’s knees and rolling his sleeves up to the elbow for him. Letting his knuckles graze the sensitive skin of Yuri’s forearm purposefully. Yuri: touch-starved and shivering. 

“Other arm.” It's not a command but it may as well be given the military precision with which Yuri complies. While Yuya sets to uncovering more of his skin, Yuri rests his palm against the front of Yuya’s hip, creeps his hand beneath the shirt hem until he finds the plane of Yuya's stomach with his fingertips. “So impatient,” Yuya grumbles. “Chill out, I'm done.” He does Yuri the favor of slipping his other hand under his shirt as well before giving back control of his arm. 

Yuri is feline. He's a serpent. He's bare forearms against the small of Yuya's back and forehead firmly against his stomach in a single fluid movement. Terrifyingly graceful. For his effort, Yuya runs fingers through his hair, purposeful pressure at the join of his neck and spine; Yuya's blunt nails scraping pleasantly at his scalp, the bones of his thumbs rubbing out the knots in Yuri’s shoulders. “I don't understand how you ever thought you wanted to be alone.”

Yuri pushes up the front of his shirt with his nose, presses his mouth to the warm skin above Yuya’s navel. Warns, “If you keep talking, I'm going to remember exactly why.”

Yuya fills pots with little carnivorous plants— _Nepenthes_ and _Sarracenia_ and _Drosera_ —leaves them in the bright sun of his windowsill, frets over their sensitivity. He comes home one afternoon to a new flytrap in the window, nestled in a pretty succulent pot filled with moss and stuck with a note— _For Yuri_ —in Yuzu’s looping script. Feels Yuri’s soft delight purred at the back of his thoughts.

Yuzu lets her hair grow long, lets Yuya brush it away from her face; let’s Yuto tie it back in a knot with a feather, his fingers a breeze across the nape of her neck. Yuto only ever wants Yuzu’s quiet company, content to coexist with her. It surprises her that he doesn’t make an effort to ask for anything for himself. She asked him once, why.

“There’s so much of Ruri in you,” he murmured. “I like seeing how she fits into the rest of who you are.” 

Yuto blushes a deep shade of red when he finally musters the boldness to get on with it. Mouth grazed across her shoulder from behind, the heel of her palm when she reaches back for him. She turns in his hold like they’re dancing, hand loose in his and each knuckle grazing his palm. Spins so she can press in close to him and spread her palm across the back of his neck; so he can close his eyes and catch her mouth with his. Left hand: her fingers flowing between his, intertwined. Right hand: a firm weight at the small of her back. 

For all the wait on his shy anxiety, Yuto is the first to leave Yuzu breathless with the intensity of his pursuit. Chased down and caught willingly. She opens her mouth beneath his, lets him seek her out, graze the roof of her mouth with his tongue; remembers the pleasant burn of teeth and bites down on his lower lip at the first opportunity. Just enough. A sound nothing short of a growl, a sharp intake of breath and they’re both pulling away. Yuzu, mouth agape and beaming, lungs emptied, flushed nose to chin; Yuto, grinning wolfishly back, eyes bright with the perpetually hunted look now absent from his features.

“Well,” she says bemused, a ghost across his lips.

When Yuya finally kisses her, it’s easy as breathing and surprisingly belated. He walks her home after dueling all evening, hand-in-hand just because he can. As she starts to pull away to offer her goodbye, Yuya squeezes her fingers between his, says, “I’d really like to kiss you.” The color rises in his cheeks, signaled only by the feeling of his burning ears.

“I’d really like you to kiss me,” Yuzu replies without the anxious overreaction that might be expected. The act of moving through trauma—the sharpness of it leaving nothing more than scars—seems to have tempered her reactions. Emboldened by how composed she appears, confident in the quiet inevitability with which they have settled into together, Yuya kisses her. Unable to tame his wild grin.

“This is the part where I tell you the fun has just begun, right?” He asks, close enough that the words pass from his lips to hers. Yuzu throws her head back and laughs, a joyous noise that makes Yuya’s heart feel too large for his chest. Her eyes crinkle up at the corners when she looks at him again, returns his kiss with arms slung loose around his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> Yuto's memories of the Resistance during the Fusion invasion were modeled after the Ghost Dance tradition, Northern Paiute specifically, though that particular detail isn't relevant to the narrative itself. Yugo's memories were mostly inspired by a patchwork of stories from bloggers/writers sharing their personal religious struggles and faith practices. I'm neither Native nor Muslim, so if I've misstepped along the way I'd be grateful to have it called out.


End file.
